ISRAEL/GAZA/WEST BANK/JERUSALEM: ISRAELI RAIDS NORTH GAZA AFTER PALESTINIAN ROCKET STRIKE

Record ID: 400564

  • Title: ISRAEL/GAZA/WEST BANK/JERUSALEM: ISRAELI RAIDS NORTH GAZA AFTER PALESTINIAN ROCKET STRIKE
  • Date: 28th August 2003
  • Summary: (U6)EREZ, ON ISRAEL/GAZA BORDER (AUGUST 28 2003)(REUTERS) 1. LV/SLV TANKS PREPARING FOR EXPECTED ACTION IN GAZA (4 SHOTS) 0.10 (U6)RAMALLAH, WEST BANK (AUGUST 28 2003)(REUTERS) 2. SV/SLV PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT YASSER ARAFAT TAKING LEAVE FROM GROUP OF INTERNATIONAL VISITORS (2 SHOTS) 0.27 3. MCU (Arabic) PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT YASSER
  • Embargoed: 12th September 2003 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: EREZ, ISRAEL, BEIT HANOUN, GAZA, RAMALLAH, WEST BANK AND JERUSALEM
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Reuters ID: LVA8YA9X269ECWB0GQVT6WGJTSQZ
  • Story Text: Israel raids north Gaza after rocket strike


    An Israeli armoured force swept into the northern
    Gaza Strip on Thursday (August 28) after Palestinian
    militants fired a makeshift rocket into a large Israeli
    city for the first time.

    The rocket caused no casualties or damage but Israel
    warned the attack may have crossed a "red line" threshold
    for serious military action inside Palestinian-administered
    Gaza after Islamist militant factions called off a
    seven-week-old truce.

    Eight Israeli tanks and two armoured bulldozers rumbled
    into the Beit Hanoun area and began felling trees about
    1,000 metres (3,300 feet) from a residential zone,
    witnesses said.

    An Israeli security source told Reuters that the forces
    were levelling shrubbery, bushes and trees used as shelter
    for the Hamas militant cell that fired the Qassam rocket.

    The rocket strike into an industrial zone of Ashkelon,
    a coastal city fo 116,000 people nine km (5.5 miles) north
    of the Gaza boundary, was the farthest a Qassam had been
    fired into Israel since a Palestinian uprising for
    statehood began in 2000.

    Palestinian officials said Palestinian security forces
    had rushed to Beit Hanoun, in northern the Gaza Strip,
    shortly after the rocket was fired to rein in Hamas
    militants responsible, preventing further launchings.

    In Ramallah, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said
    Israel was escalating tensions and was not committed to the
    U.S.-backed Road Map for peace in the Middle East. He
    called for international observers to be sent to the region.

    Islamic militants renounced their truce, crucial to the
    troubled plan, after Israel assassinated a Hamas political
    leader in a missile strike following a suicide bomb attack
    in Jerusalem by a Hamas man based in the West Bank.

    Israeli troops have been poised at the entrance to
    northern Gaza since Hamas and Islamic Jihad renounced a
    ceasefire underpinning the Road Map
    New volleys of Qassams have since hit Jewish
    settlements inside Gaza and farm communities and the town
    of Sderot in southern Israel, causing minor damage and few
    casualties.


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